


Sinking In

by Fossarian



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 23:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19094998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fossarian/pseuds/Fossarian
Summary: Sansa has a conversation with Theon that ends up revealing some of her own confused feelings.





	Sinking In

“It’s getting to be a problem.” 

Sansa rolls her eyes and takes a sip off her wine cup. “And what would that be?” 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jon’s dark figure looms over her. “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed.” 

A few feet away from her, Theon walks across the room and puts a lance back in its holder. Her eyes sweep down his frame, noting small details in his progress as a mother would. _He’s gaining weight,_ she thinks. _Good._

Theon always looked best with a little meat on his bones. Too thin and he begins to look sickly, his large eyes overwhelming his face. She’s glad he’s kept his hair long. 

Not that it’s her business what he does with his hair. Or any other of his personal hygiene choices. 

“You need to say something,” Jon says, not taking the hint with Sansa’s silence. 

“Why me?” she snaps. She puts her cup down and watches Theon leave the room. He sort of shuffles when he walks and she hasn’t figured out if one of his legs hurt or that hunched posture was beaten in to him by Ramsay. 

_Iron can bend or break, but it’ll harden with each beating all the same._

Her father’s voice echoes in her head, that little bit of wisdom lost to her understanding until this moment. He had been talking about Theon’s father then, or so Sansa had thought at the time, only half listening. What did she care about some ugly old men who had too much time on their hands for plotting rebellion? It didn’t concern _her._

Or so she’d thought. Once upon a time. 

“He listens to you,” Jon says. 

“He listens to you too,” Sansa says, trying to ignore the guilty little flip of pleasure Jon’s words bring. _Does he really?_ she wants to say, like a stupid maid mooning after the stable boy. _Has he said that? What else does he say?_

She folds her hands into her lap, straightens her posture. She’s a queen now. What Theon’s opinion of her is shouldn’t matter. 

It shouldn’t. 

“He smells,” Jon says bluntly. “Good God, I think it’s got to be a month since his last bath. The other day I almost pushed him into the river. It will be better coming from a woman.” 

Sansa flushes in anger, tightens her hands in their fold. “You don’t know -” she starts in a furious whisper. But she stops herself. 

Because Jon really doesn’t know. 

“I will speak to him,” she sighs, her shoulders slumping. “I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.” 

Having won, Jon retreats with grace. “Thank you.” 

He doesn’t bow to her as he should, but Sansa can’t be bothered to be irritated about it. The Night’s Watch has always had an air of holier-than-thou to them, which rather explains why they tend to keep to themselves even amongst the civilians. Now that all their warnings proved to be right, they’re almost unbearable. 

Sansa gets up from her table and waves away her ladies in attendance. “I’m going to take a walk,” she says to the nearest one. 

“Yes, your Grace,” they respond in a murmured unison. 

Sansa hopes they stop doing that eventually. Most of these people have seen her when her gowns were still cut at the knees. 

Walking into the courtyard, it doesn’t take her long to find Theon. He never seems to be far from her. 

There’s something about his presence that soothes her to the marrow. All the tension from Jon’s conversation eases from her shoulders at the simple sight of Theon sitting on a pile of hay, one knee cocked up to his chest. A small, bright knife flashes in his hand as he skins an apple. 

“My septa said you’re supposed to eat the skins,” she says as she approaches, watching as another long red curlicue drops to the ground. “It’s healthier for you.” 

“Never had a septa,” Theon says. He looks up at her and begins to slide off the hay pile, but Sansa stops him. 

“You don’t have to get up for me,” she says. 

“You’re a queen now, my lady,” he says. His deep voice is so pretty. Sansa feels like an idiot every time she’s around him. She can’t focus on anything. 

Desperate for something to collect her wits, she looks down at his hand. He holds the knife a little askew because of the missing fingers, but he has a sure grip on it. 

“I did it for Robb,” he says. 

“Did what?” Distracted, Sansa brings her eyes back up to Theon’s face. He has dirt smudges on it. His clothes are a little careworn. It’s not that he’s filthy, Sansa thinks defensively. It’s just that he’s been working so hard, his own appearance seems to have escaped his priorities. 

“I called him the things you’re supposed to call a king and a few things besides…” Done with the apple skinning, he flicks a peel off his finger with a deft motion. He doesn’t start eating it in front of her, though. 

Theon always had better manners than her brothers. 

Anticipating a joke, Sansa says, “What were the other things?” 

“Things I can’t repeat in front of a lady,” Theon says without smiling. 

The old Theon used to smile endlessly. It was a kind of defense, Sansa believes with the clarity of time. Like her time with Joffrey. If you’re pleasing and pretty, sometimes you don’t get hurt as much. Sometimes. 

She moves to sit next to him on the pile of hay. 

Looking startled, Theon almost falls off of it in his haste to give her room. “I wanted to talk to you,” she says, lifting herself up. She’s pleased to find that not all of her strength from growing up a child of the North has deserted her and she climbs on top of the hay with no more difficulty than Arya might have. 

“O-oh?” Theon says. 

She takes the apple and knife from his hands and begins cutting off a piece. “Yes…” 

This isn’t easy. She sends a silent curse to Jon. 

So close and she can smell Theon’s body, but in a strange way it doesn’t really bother her. It’s just his sweat, evidence of his dedication to her and his own neglect of himself. Theon smelled so much worse in Ramsay’s hands. Ramsay had _liked_ him that way, so dirty that no one else wanted to be around him. So dirty no one else would even dream of wanting to touch him. 

Except Ramsay. 

Sansa wonders if Theon thinks about him still. If it's as much as Sansa does. She was not in his care long enough to develop the odd relationship Theon had with him. Ramsay had barely been able to handle Theon being out of his sight for more than an hour. 

Sansa can kind of relate to it. 

Sometimes Theon talks to himself. She’ll hear him muttering under his breath when he’s in the courtyard or in the stables, and she tries not to listen, but a spike of anxiety always runs through her. 

It's so easy to slip. Just a gradual fading away. She clings to any hint of the old Theon, tries to encourage it to grow like a flower. 

The yard boys and apprentices make fun of him, but they’re also afraid of him. Sansa scolded a group of them when she heard them mimicking Theon’s stutter. The lads give him a wide berth as they follow him around, watching his practice sword fights with the other guards. Theon is relatively indifferent to the attention, if he’s even aware of it, and doesn’t seem to realize that his lack of reaction to most levels of pain is not normal. 

Last week a white-hot iron fell on his bare hand and Theon barely blinked. Just quietly walked away and dipped it in cold water until Sansa harassed him to see the maester. 

“Is your hand healing?” she says. 

“Of course.” Theon flexes it out for her assessment. He always keeps his hands wrapped and it doesn’t look odd because it’s so cold up here, but if you know what to look for you can see where he’s missing fingers. 

“No more getting hurt,” Sansa says, wishing her power of command extended that far. 

“I’ll do my best, your Grace,” Theon says. 

They lapse into a comfortable silence. One of the knights walking past shoots them a glance and Sansa realizes they must make a picture, the dirt disheveled prince of the Iron Isles and a newly crowned Northern queen, sitting on a hale bale like two street urchins. 

“Theon,” she begins, licking her lips. The cold air zaps away the moisture. “I have noticed recently that you’re not - that you haven’t been…” She searches around the yard as if the words she needs will be lying there for her. She turns her head and isn’t prepared for his calm gray gaze, already focused on her face. Her heart flips. 

“You need to take better care of yourself,” she says, drawing herself up in a way she hopes appears queenly. 

Theon used to strut around Winterfell like he owned it. He was like that with everything and everyone. When Sansa was a girl, talking to him always made her feel very grown up. Theon’s interest in her had been minimal, but there had been times when he was bored and he would tease her a little. 

But not like a child, not like Arya was teased. 

He would lean against the castle wall and use his height to look down on her, always smiling in a slightly sardonic way that was not entirely nice, and Sansa had known, even then, that she ought not to let him speak to her in so familiar a manner, that she ought to tell her mother or her septa that Theon Greyjoy was forgetting his place. 

But she’d liked it too much, only understanding half his jokes. 

Theon doesn’t really joke anymore. Or if he does, it’s not with Sansa. She tries not to let it bother her. 

“Take care of myself?” Theon says blankly. 

Sansa cuts off another slice of the apple and hands it to him. He takes it but doesn’t eat it. “You can do whatever you want here,” she says, her eyes meeting his. “No one will tell you otherwise. I have -” She begins to blush, and she wishes it was from some obscene remark the Theon of old had made to her instead of this awkward situation. 

“I have noticed you are not bathing,” she says in a rush. 

“Oh,” Theon says. He doesn’t react, hardly seems surprised. But then, he rarely shows emotion of any kind. 

“You know you can ask for a bath to be drawn whenever you want, don’t you?” she says. “You can ask for anything.” 

“Yes, you have said that before.” 

“I mean it,” Sansa persists, taking his hand. “You’re a war hero. Everyone here is happy to do your bidding. And I am the lady here and I have said you will have what you wish.” 

That last part she hadn’t intended to come out quite so brazen, but it feels necessary to reach him. And it’s nothing but the truth. 

Theon’s fingers flex in her hold and she tightens her grip as if he meant to pull away. He doesn’t, just looks down at their entwined hands with this inscrutable expression on his face. She can’t read him. She never understood him. None of the Starks did. 

“I am sorry I have been offensive to you, my lady,” Theon says. “I’m -” He stops and she can see him trying to figure out something in his head. “I’m very remiss in these matters. You - you’re the only person who touches me. I don’t like being touched.” 

“No one needs to,” Sansa says, quite understanding that. 

“I kept putting it off,” he says, almost to himself now. “I don't like taking my clothes off… I don’t like being this way.” He says this last part with a sudden aggression that takes Sansa aback. “I don’t like being dirty or disgusting.” 

Sansa opens her mouth to assure him she never thought that, but he keeps talking and so she shuts up. He hasn’t said so many words to her since they were prisoners at Dreadfort. It's like encouraging a wild animal to eat out of your hand. Patience and silence. 

“It’s just it’s - it’s better this way. So I don’t forget my place.” 

His words chill her to the bone. He doesn’t seem aware that he’s disturbed her, his head lowered and his gaze focused on the ground. 

“I can be clean, though,” he says with finality. “I don’t want to offend you. I never -” He takes this great shuddering breath. “I never do.” 

“You don’t offend me,” Sansa says. She lets go of his hand and slides her fingers across his face, forcing him to look at her like she had so long ago in Ramsay’s bedroom, trying to make him remember, to see sense. Her fingers graze along the stubble of his jaw. His mouth looks soft, easily hurt. 

“Your place is here.” 

He stares at her with that same lack of comprehension that he's given Sansa so many times before. Like he can't figure out why she's still talking to him. But it is only there a moment. He’s better at this game than her and he knows the answers people expect from him.

“As you say, your Grace.” 

“Sansa,” Sansa says with a little more force than is kind. “We’re alone, you can call me Sansa.” 

“Sansa,” he repeats obediently. 

Her fingers curl in his hair. She wants to kiss him. He would probably let her, whatever his own feelings on the matter. Her thumping heart decelerates. 

Something of the ghost of Robert Baratheon moves through and the belligerent thought goes through her head: _I’m the king here, who’s going to tell me no?_

Certainly not Theon. 

“I don’t want you to get dirty touching me,” Theon murmurs. 

“I won’t,” Sansa says with a suspicion that they are talking about something else entirely. “I won’t.” 

But Theon takes her hands and removes them from his face. “You will,” he says in this matter-of-fact, subdued tone that used to enrage her. It was the way he used to speak to her when he tried to make her understand Ramsay. _This is how it is, there’s nothing you can do._

As a Stark, it went against everything she believed. But she had been spared the worst of Ramsay’s attention, she knew that now. Perhaps if their situations had been reversed, she would be the one who preferred her own filth to the dubious comfort of strangers. 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa says, embarrassed now and wanting to get away. Her mind floods with other possibilities for Theon’s rejection. He simply doesn’t want her. 

She hops off the hay bale and Theon’s apple falls from her lap. “I’m sorry,” she says again, stooping to pick it up. 

Theon is quicker than her, though, and he swipes it away. “It’s all right,” he says, as if it truly is. 

Despite herself, his voice has the never failing affect of calming her. 

“You can’t eat it now,” Sansa says. “It’s dirty.” 

“I’ve eaten worse,” Theon says. 

Irritated at his lack of concern for anything to do with himself, Sansa bats it away from his hand and kicks it off into a horse dung pile. 

“I will find you a new one,” she says. “I will fetch you a bath and you will have all the means of comfort in your room. I won’t bother you again on this matter.”

Turning on her heel, her skirts swirl around her dramatically, which would have made for a very grand exit except for Theon’s soft voice drawing her up short like a rope around her waist. 

“You are mad at me?” 

She is not sure she can ever be mad at him again. There had been a time when she fantasized about his death, of doing the things to him as Ramsay had done. But she’d been a fool. People like Ramsay didn’t need a reason to cause misery. 

“No,” she sighs. “Of course not.” 

Theon stands with one shoulder lower than the other, a habitual slouch that she finds endearing. Yet Sansa knows that beneath his simple clothes are hard muscles and scars, skin toughened from multiple beatings and burnings. He’s more dangerous than people realize, and aren’t those always the most dangerous? Like her little sister, Theon isn’t taken very seriously until it’s too late. 

“I will do whatever pleases you,” Theon says. “Did I say something wrong?” 

Sansa shakes her head. She allows her eyes to travel up his lean frame. She can’t ask him for what she wants. 

She extends her hand and Theon takes it without hesitation. “Why do you say things like that?” 

“Say what?” 

Turning, Sansa slips her arm through Theon’s arm and pulls him in to step beside her. They begin to walk across the courtyard, Theon choosing the route. Sometimes it’s nice to be guided. 

“That you’ll do whatever I want? No matter what? My father said ‘anything’ is the most dangerous word in Westeros.” 

Theon shrugs. “You’re my queen.” 

Just like that. _That’s just how it is._

When they’ve reached the gate, Sansa turns around. There’s still a dirt spot on Theon’s cheek. Not caring who sees, she reaches up and rubs it off. “You must do as I say, then,” she says. “You must take care of yourself.” 

“Yes, all right,” Theon says mildly. 

Unsatisfied, Sansa shakes her head. “You don’t even know how to do that. You didn’t before this tiresome war had begun. I will have to teach you.” 

A shadow of a smile caresses the corners of Theon’s mouth. “Maybe I would like that.” 

Something in his voice makes Sansa's cheeks heat. “I would make it enjoyable.” 

She’s not good at these word games, the casual flirting that was commonplace at King’s Landing court. Theon has always been a natural. Sansa can’t even say for certain what she means by her own words. 

“Well, come with me now,” Sansa says. She lifts her head, trying for imperious, but there’s still that faint smile lingering on Theon’s lips and he doesn’t seem very convinced by the act. 

“As my lady wishes,” he says, and despite his acquiescence Sansa imagines there is a hidden meaning. 

She turns and Theon follows her. And that almost feels like enough.


End file.
